The present invention relates to an automobile bumper arrangement a modular bumper system for an automobile.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
Bumper systems of automobiles have particular importance in view of current legal requirements in the area of low-speed tests and high-speed tests, because the design of a bumper system has a direct impact on the type of damage and the monetary amount of damages of an automobile.
The type of damage and the monetary amount of damages are used for assigning automobiles to specific insurance classifications. The lower the amount of expected damages, the more favorable is the insurance classification for the automobile. A number of different crash repair tests exist. For example, a 10° barrier may be employed, i.e., the vehicle drives onto a barrier with a 10° slope during an offset crash, whereas the vehicle is hit by a ram vehicle during a rear offset crash, with the ram vehicle hitting the vehicle at an angle of 10° relative to the longitudinal vehicle axis. As a result of the design of today's automobiles, the barriers directly hit the bumper support of subsequent crash boxes, whereby the crash boxes absorb in these crash repair tests the major part of the energy, i.e., approximately the entire energy.
In addition, tests can also be performed with a barrier overlap of only 15% with the axle width or the width of the vehicle. The so-called bumper-to-bumper tests place completely different demands on the properties of the bumper crossbeam.
Typically, bumper crossbeams are slightly curved, whereby their end sections which protrude over the side rails or crash boxes may have a greater curvature. This has particular reasons dictated by the vehicle body, which is determined by the appearance and the aerodynamics of the skirt arranged above the bumper system.
When the degree of overlap with a barrier is very low, for example during the bumper-to-bumper test, the barrier used in a crash test may slide of the curved end section of the bumper crossbeam or the automobile may slides along the barrier, which may cause significant damage to the fender area. This type of damage will result in a lower insurance classification.
Today's shape of automobiles, in particular of passenger vehicles, with rounded corner regions on the crossbeams leaves very little flexibility for the design of the bumper crossbeam, whereby the curved end sections can not be eliminated, because they are necessary for transferring the impact energy to the crash boxes and the side rail, respectively. The corner regions are also of particular importance in the event of potential side impact crashes in order to minimize the type of damage.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to obviate prior art shortcomings and to provide an improved bumper arrangement which can be adapted for different types of vehicles and which further improves the response in a crash.